Best Practice Writing Instruction In our work, we have found that teachers achieve best practice when they concentrate their efforts on the following six instructional areas:
Writer’s Workshop - A system for classroom management and the development of an effective writing community - Focused mini-lessons taught in the context of authentic writing; the majority of class time reserved for writing; conferencing; sharing; students choosing their own topics and forms; emphasis on authentic audiences and purposeful communication; writer’s notebooks; frequent teacher modelling; five days a week, 45-60 minutes per day at elementary, three days a week at secondary; etc.
Writing Process - Teaching students how to write the way real writers write. - Pre-writing to develop ideas; drafting to increase fluency and expression; sharing to get feedback; revision to apply feedback; editing to produce conventional writing; publishing to make work available with others; assessing to understand strengths and weaknesses and determine goals for improvement.
Writing Strategies - Reliable, re-usable techniques that help writers solve common problems - e.g. Topic T-Chart; What-Why-How; Idea-Details; lead strategies; ending strategies; pacing strategies, transition strategies, sentence strategies, conventions strategies; etc.
Six Traits - A language of quality that defines good writing - Ideas: main idea, details, showing, purpose, originality; Organization: leads, endings, transitions, pacing, sequencing; Voice: personality, style, respect for audience; honesty; control; Word Choice: strong verbs, specific nouns and modifiers, appropriate vocabulary, memorable phrases, grammar and usage; Sentence Fluency: length, beginnings, sound, expression, construction; Conventions: capitalization, ending punctuation, internal punctuation, paragraphing, spelling.
Authentic Forms - Helping students explore and master the kinds of writing done by real people in the real world - narrative, expository, persuasive; informational writing, reviews; letters; newspaper and magazine articles; etc.
Reading-Writing Connection - Helping students internalize reading and writing as complimentary aspects of literate communication - analysing reading texts for writing techniques; Studying the same forms in reading that we want students to write; Reading and evaluating the writing of other students; etc.
In our work, we have found that teachers achieve best practice when they concentrate their efforts on the following six instructional areas: